Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM Sections Close DONATE Food & Wine CommentaShared: 5!"#$%& Italy’s Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity An aperitivo is not “Happy Hour” or an excuse to drink to oblivion, it has many other attractions for Italians. Italian Hours by Lucy Gordan https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 1 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM Italian aperitivo (Photo by annca da Pixabay). Jul 29 2019 Though conflicting stories obscure their origins, and many may claim to have invented them, aperitifs like Negroni, Aperol, Chinotto and Crodino are all extremely popular. They may be highly alcoholic, or barely so, they may be seasonal or not, but they are ubiquitous in Italy. Italy is world famous for its varied regional landscapes, history, food and accompanying wines. However, if you go straight out to dinner, you’ll be missing out on a quintessential tradition of la bella vita, because, when they have time, self-respecting Italians, especially in the north and in big cities, start their evening with an aperitivo or pre-dinner drink. https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 2 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM An aperitivo is not “Happy Hour” or an excuse to drink to oblivion. Italians blame many ailments on their livers so the aperitivo has digestive purposes. It allows Italians to relax, unwind and socialize after work. It also starts their digestive metabolism and gets the juices flowing with a light, dry or bitter tonic with a ‘bite’ to work up their appetite before dinner. This so-called ‘bitter bite’ is beloved to Italians who prefer it and the overly sweet to sour. It took me several years to get used to bitter, much less like it. The oldest aperitivo is vermouth, an aromatic fortified wine created in Turin, where the aperitivo tradition is still strongest today. As www.selectitaly.com tells us: “ One of the oldest vermouths dates back to 1757 when two herbalist brothers, Giovanni Giacomo and Carlo Stefano Cinzano created vermouth rosso, initially marketed as a medicinal tonic.” This explains the bitter quality of many Italian drinks, even non-alcoholic ones like chinotto or crodino. https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 3 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM The Cinzano brothers flavored their vermouth, (its name derived from the German wormwood), with Wermut, its main ingredient, and with over 30 aromatic plants from the nearby Alps: herbs, barks, and roots such as juniper, gentian and coriander. Their other ingredients, continues the website, “were a white wine base, cane sugar and a small amount of distilled spirit, often brandy, to pump up the alcoholic strength, although exact recipes are closely guarded secrets.” Aside from Cinzano, its most popular brands are Carpano and https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 4 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM Martini & Rossi, drunk by themselves or mixed to create Campari. cocktails. The second most popular Italian aperitivo is Campari, also red but much brighter in color, first sold by Gaspare Campari, born in Cassolonovo in the province of Novara, the tenth child of a farmer. By 1860 he’d formulated Campari’s recipe combining 60 ingredients: herbs, fruit, spices, and alcohol. Its distinctive ruby red color came from crushed ‘lady bugs’ (cochineal insects), a practice stopped in 2006. https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 5 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM Campari’s popularity grew fast and Gaspare moved his bar to Milan facing the Gothic cathedral. When his sons took over the business, they opened bars in Nice and on the French Riviera. Today Campari is sold in over 190 countries. In 2010 for the product’s 150th anniversary Campari opened a museum at Via A. Gramsci 61, in Sesto San Giovanni, on the outskirts of Milan, the company’s headquarters since 1904 when it was opened by Davide, one of Gaspare’s sons. On display on the first floor are posters, advertisements, art, company documents showing the product; on the second floor the product itself in its various shaped bottles. Vermouth rosso (one third) and Campari (one third) together with another third of gin are the ingredients of the first Italian cocktail, Negroni, stirred with a bar spoon and served in an Old Fashioned glass over already-stirred ice and with a slice of orange peel. Arnold Henry Savage Landor. The drink’s origins are controversial. The most widely reported account is that it was first mixed in Florence at the Caffè Cassoni (formerly Caffè Giacosa), located on Florence’s fashionable shopping street Via de’ Tornabuoni, now called Caffè Roberto Cavalli after its present-day owner, the fashion designer. Supposedly, Count Camillo Negroni (1868-1934), the son of Count Enrico Negroni and Ada Savage Landor, the niece of the British poet Walter Savage Landor, concocted it in 1919 or 1920; hence this year is its 100th birthday. The story is told that Negroni asked the bartender Fosco Scarselli, to strengthen his favorite https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 6 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM cocktail, the Americano, by adding gin rather than soda water. Scarselli added a slice of orange as garnish rather than the Americano’s typical lemon slice to distinguish the two different drinks. Carlo Negroni Another claimant of the self-titled cocktail, although unlikely, is a cousin of Camillo, Arnold Henry Savage Landor (1865-1924), the famous painter, explorer, witty writer, anthropologist and cat lover, who like Camillo was born, died, and buried in the English cemetery in Florence. Some descendants of General Pascal Olivier de Negroni, count de Negroni, claim rather unconvincingly that their ancestor invented the drink in 1857 while stationed in Senegal, while still another dates it to https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 7 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM Camillo Negroni 1914. Antonio Poggio Steffania, Presidente dell’Opera Pia Negroni di Novara, reported Rome’s newspaper Il Messaggero on June 14, announced that Carlo Negroni, Mayor of Novara and later Senator, thought up the drink. Whoever the inventor, after the cocktail’s success, the Italian Negroni family founded the Negroni Distillerie in Treviso and produced a ready-made version of the drink, sold as Antico Negroni 1919. Nonetheless, its popularity outside Italy had to wait another generation until Orson Welles, while working in Rome in 1947 either on the film “Cagliostro” or “Black Magic”, commented that a new drink called Negroni was his favorite. “The bitters are excellent for your liver; the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.” The drink was immortalized in the film of “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” (1960), where the protagonist orders a “magnificent Negroni” to forget her late husband and open herself to young love. That same year Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond in his story “Risico” becomes a Negroni fan. https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 8 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM Luca Picchi The Negroni: Drinking to La Dolce Vita: with Recipes and Lore, a book by Gary Regan, (2015) offers more anecdotes and over thirty recipes. It includes the story of the ‘Negroni Sbagliato’ or ‘Bungled or Erroneous Negroni’. According to legend, a bartender at the busy Bar Basso in Milan picked up the wrong bottle, accidently pouring sparkling white wine for the gin. No matter, the ‘sbagliato’ is a very popular alternative especially in summer. Another expert is Florentine Luca Picchi, barman at the historical bar on Florence’s main square, Piazza della Signoria, across from the Palazzo Vecchio, and author of Sulle tracce del Conte. La vera storia del cocktail ‘Negroni’ (2008) and Negroni Cocktail: an Italian Legend (2015). All three volumes are available from Amazon. https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 9 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM Negroni Cocktail. https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/food/2019/07/29/italys-aperitivi-a-guide-to-their-origins-and-popularity/ Page 10 of 21 Italyʼs Aperitivi: A Guide to Their Origins and Popularity – La Voce di New York 7/31/19, 12)46 PM Wondrich.